Dareduff Hill Quarry Application

We’ve been made aware of a planning application submitted to East Ayrshire Council to create a new quarry on Kingston Road between Neilston and Dunlop. You can see the exact location on the map below. The applicant is hoping for around ten years of operation, extracting hard rock for use on construction projects around Scotland. The number of lorry trips through Neilston and Dunlop during the ten years of operation would be around 1/3 million.

We’re working with our colleagues in Dunlop and Neilston Community Councils to fully assess the likely impact of the quarry, but from our investigation so far we have three main concerns:

The noise impact from the new quarry has not been meaningfully assessed by the applicant, and therefore we cannot assess what the impact would be on our village, or those of Dunlop or Neilston. This should be done by the applicant to allow all affected stakeholders to understand the impact.

The lorries used are likely to be the high-cab tipper trucks that are particularly threatening to pedestrians and cyclists. The applicant has identified that the high number of journeys through the villages is an issue, but their only control is the addition of CCTV to the lorries. We do not believe that is sufficient, given it would only be of use in assigning fault after an incident, rather than preventing it. As a minimum, the applicant should commit to only using lorries with side guards and the full set of six mirrors. Ideally, we would want to see direct-vision cabs. This follows best practice from Transport for London, and the London Cycling Campaign.

No measures have been put in place to maintain road surfaces given the much higher frequency of HGV traffic. Bonds should be secured from the applicant to allow North Ayrshire and East Renfrewshire Councils to conduct maintenance work at the applicant’s cost.

When we’ve finished assessing all the material we’ll update this page, and we will publish our draft response in the next few days. We’ve provided a “key points” document here, which summarises a lot of the data available on the planning portal.

The closing date to provide for your feedback on these plans to East Ayrshire Council is the 25th May 2019. Please consider doing so, particularly if you have children at the schools and nursery in Neilston (the lorries would be passing directly outside).

Please also let us know your thoughts, to allow us to more accurately capture the Uplawmoor community’s opinions in our submission.